


The Activities Fair

by bluebellsandcocklesshells



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Closeted Character, College AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 06:41:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6743473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebellsandcocklesshells/pseuds/bluebellsandcocklesshells





	The Activities Fair

Dean glanced through the lounge that connected the two freshman dorm hallways, and sighed longingly as the group on the east hall whooped and hollered and laughed.  On the west hall, his RA was a nervous sophomore who kept asking if everyone was okay with the rules they had to follow.  Like, did it matter if they were okay with them if they had to follow them anyway?

Chuck looked at his clipboard again.  “Okay, well, we’ve about covered everything.  Don’t forget our hall will meet up with the Orientation Aide tomorrow at 9:00am.  The rest of today you can explore campus and buy your books if you already know what classes you’re taking.  I’m here if you have questions about meal plans or if you need help using the class registration system.  Oh!  The activities fair is this afternoon starting at 1:00.  I really advise you all go to it.  Clubs and intramural sports are where you’ll find most of your friends here.  Not that your hallmates won’t be your friends.  I mean, you don’t have to be friends with your hallmates.  It’s a not a bad thing, but…”

Chuck continued to ramble awkwardly and Dean tuned him out.  It was his second day at school, and the first without his family.  They had moved him into his dorm room the previous day and they’d met his randomly assigned roommate, Cole.  He seemed a little intense, but they’d probably get along.  Probably.  Unless the guy turned out to be a total asshat.  It was too early to tell.

What Dean was focused on, to the point of almost vibrating out of his skin, was that here—over a thousand miles away from Lawrence at a university that none of his high school classmates were attending (he checked)—he would be free to be…“himself.”

He was annoyed for being a hippie about it, thinking of himself in terms of his “façade” and his “true self.”  But he couldn’t think of any less silly terms to use.  He’d been totally closeted in high school, which wasn’t that a big deal since he did like girls, but whenever Victor Henriksen had done pull-ups in gym class, it would have been nice to be able to stare openly.

He’d stayed closeted because he knew his classmates would be dillweeds about the whole thing, and no one would believe he was bi.  They’d just call him gay.  Not that there was anything wrong with that.  He’d also been a little worried about his parents’ reactions.  He figured they might have to know some day, but he wanted the chance to explore his attraction to men without the weight of judge-y parental looks.  He didn’t think they’d be mad, but they might be disappointed.  Like, they had this idea of what a perfect son might be: good at baseball, popular in school, smart enough to get into the engineering program at his school of choice–-like girls and get married and have kids one day.  Granted nowadays that dream was still totally viable with two men, but it would probably make them look at him a little differently.  He wasn’t ready for that yet.

Besides, what if he wasn’t really into guys that much at all?  What if he was curious to make out with one, maybe have some hands on fun, but he wasn’t interested in dating one?  There was no need to make his parents think he might date, fall in love with, and marry a guy if he was never going to feel that way about another dude.  Being bisexual had its perks when it came to hiding—but, wasn’t that the whole point?  To not have to be able to hide?

“D-Dean?”

“Yeah?” Dean asked, looking at Chuck.

“Did you need something?”

They were alone in the hall together.  Everyone else must have gone to explore campus, and he was still standing there like a goober.

“Uh…where is the activities fair?”

“In Adler Hall.  Just across the street.”

“Okay.  Thanks.  Um…any advice about how to go through it?  Or, I mean,” Dean felt his head heat up because he sounded like such a dumb little freshman.  But Chuck just smiled.

“Well, there are a lot of clubs, so it can take a while to through all of them, but it can be fun to do that.  Most of them give out candy or something at the very least.  Or, you can just go to the ones that interest you.  And I mean the ones that _interest_ you, not the ones you think people think should interest you.”

Dean still felt a little warm because Chuck seemed to know how much of his persona was actually bullshit.

“Um.  Are you in any clubs?”

“Yeah.  I’m in the Creative Writing Club.  I have to cover our booth at 2:00.  And I’m also in the co-ed intramural softball league.”

“Softball?”

He shrugged.  “Yeah, the intramural baseball team is a little too hardcore for me.  Besides, it’s fun to play with girls.  Oh!  That came out wrong.”

Dean laughed.  “Or it came out just right.  Thanks, Chuck.  I’ll be sure to swing by the Creative Writing Club booth.”

“Oh, do you write?”

“Not at all,” Dean said with a big grin.

Chuck laughed.  “Maybe you’ll start.  You’ll find your hidden passion!  You’ll be a famous author someday writing crime stories or horror novels!”

Dean raised an eyebrow.

“S-sorry.  I get excited about writing.”

“I see that.  Well, catch you later, Chuck.”

Dean left the dorm and grabbed a quick lunch at the cafeteria next door to Adler Hall before entering the large, main room of the non-academic building.  It housed the student gym and some handball courts, but mainly provided a space for activities that required more room than the average classroom could provide.

The booths were set up in two squares, one inside the other so that students could mill around the middle and see clubs on both sides.  At one end there was a break in the booths and a stage had been set up so that each club had a few minutes to perform a demonstration or provide information about their group to the room as a whole.  Currently the Karate Club was on the stage and two people in white uniforms with brown belts were sparring with each other.

Dean was handed a flyer for the booth closest to him: The Gardening Club.  Yeah…he was going to have an open mind in college, but no.  He smiled at the girl who had given him the flyer, took a Starburst from the bowl on the table, and moved on without a word.

He started by browsing every single booth, but there really didn’t seem much point to stopping at the Chinese Student Association or the Model Builder Club—he wouldn’t be joining either.  He started going only to the ones that interested him, skipping the LGBTAQ+ (and where had all those letters come from?) Alliance—he figured he could swing by that one later because he hadn’t quite built up the nerve yet to just be… _out_.  Of course not everyone who was a part of the Alliance was necessarily queer, but that generally was the assumption and he was still too…he sighed.  A chickenshit.  He was being a chickenshit.  Just like he was too embarrassed to go up to the Sci-Fi Club booth even though some guy was wearing a _Star Trek_ T-shirt and he wanted to ask him where he’d gotten it.  He was going to have to make a second circuit when he finally found his balls and realized that in college he didn’t have to live by small town bullshit rules anymore.

Just as he got toward the end of the circuit and was psyching himself up to actually talk to the clubs that interested him, he spotted him.

Tall, athletic, dark-hair, beautiful face…and blue eyes, Dean noticed as he drew closer.  He couldn’t be a freshman.  He didn’t have that owlish, excited, slightly overwhelmed look about him.  But it didn’t matter.  He was hot and Dean was going to talk to him.  It was good to know that his attraction to men could work like it did with women: see something you like, go talk to it.

“Hey,” Dean said, drawing the guy’s attention away from the girl he had been talking to.  “So, I’m really excited about joining this club.  It’s, like, a primary part of my personality.”

Dean thought he couldn’t have been smoother.  Common interests always broke the ice.  The guy just raised an eyebrow at him though.

“Is it really?”

“Yeah.  It’s shaped my whole life in a way.”

The guy crossed his toned arms over his broad chest, his blue eyes sparkling with humor.  “In what way specifically?”

Dean finally glanced at the sign on the table so that he’d have something to talk about.  He swallowed with difficulty.  He was standing in front of the Campus Feminists booth.

“Uh…”  Dean looked back at the guy.  The girl standing next to him smirked at him like she knew he was a total douche bag.  The cute guy looked similarly amused, but at least was giving him the benefit of the doubt.

“Equal pay for equal work?”

“Oh!”  A girl behind the table jumped and clapped.  “That is one of our primary goals we’re working toward this year!”  She thrust a bunch of information pamphlets at Dean.  “My name is Becky.  I’m the vice president.  I’m also the president of the Creative Writing Club, so stop by there too.  This is Meg; she’s the president, but likes to be called Prime Mistress.”

Dean’s eyes darted over to the president—Prime Mistress.  She was tiny and cute, but he was pretty certain she could rip him apart without chipping a nail.

“Unh-huh.”

“We’re so glad to have you!” Becky continued.  “It really helps our cause when we can prove that men can be feminists too!  Because it’s not about hating men.  It’s about equality.”

“R-right.”  Becky had _so much energy_.  He turned to the guy, still hoping for a name.  “And what are you?  The secretary?  Or, administrative assistant?” he asked with a smile.

The guy smiled back and the middle schooler inside Dean fainted to the floor.

“I’m actually not a member of this club.”

Dean’s smile froze.

“I believe in the cause and I’m friends with these fine ladies, of course, but my schedule keeps me too busy.  I’m on the school’s track team in the spring, but it’s cross country so I have to do it year round.  And I do intramural soccer in the fall.  And, I also do Kendo.”

“Kendo?”  Dean asked, still swirling in embarrassment and feeling like a tool.

“Mm-hmm.  It’s Japanese sword fighting.”

“Like fencing?”

“Sort of.  But no.  We’re actually giving our demonstration next, if you’d like to see it.”

Dean nodded.  “Yeah…that’d be…okay.”

“I’m Cas, by the way.”

“Dean.”

They shook hands and a chorus of angels sang a hallelujah when their palms touched.

“It was nice meeting you, Dean.  Be sure to stop by the Kendo booth after our demonstration.”

“Yeah, of course.”

Cas said goodbye to the girls and then paused as he brushed past Dean unnecessarily close, making the hair on both their arms rise.

“Also, I find men who respect women really attractive,” he said softly.

Dean blushed and didn’t turn around to watch the guy walk away.  Even though since he did track and soccer and whatever Japanese sword fighting entailed, his ass had to be spectacular.  But he missed it because he remained facing the girls.

Meg rolled her eyes.  “You can stop pretending now.  And we won’t tell your ‘secret’ to Cas.”

“About what?” Becky asked, looking confused.

“He’s not a feminist, he was just trying to scam on Cas.”

The nerve!  It was true, but fuck her.  “That’s not true.  I totally am a feminist.  It was important to my mom.  You know, my mom makes more money than my dad and he has to cook dinner three nights a week.  We’re a very gender equitable home.”

Kind of true.  His dad got take-out or nuked something for Sam and Dean on nights that his mother worked late at the hospital.  But she did make more than him.

Becky smiled brightly.  “That’s fantastic!  We meet on Tuesday nights.  I hope you can make it.”

“I will,” Dean said, giving Meg a look.

She gave him another smirk in return.  “Welcome to the club, Dean-o.  But you better hurry.  Your man is about to take the stage.”

Dean flushed and stalked away.  She didn’t know everything.  And why was she being so blatant about it?  Maybe she and Cas were dating and she found his crush amusing?  Shit.  He’d known the guy thirty seconds.  It wasn’t a crush, it was just—

Dean stopped in his tracks as he saw the Kendo Club members take the stage.  They were wearing Japanese style clothing and actual armor.  Cas was getting a helmet with a face mask tied onto his head.  These guys weren’t really going to whack each other with swords, were they?

After some ceremonial bowing, that is exactly what they did.  They moved quickly and smoothly, shouting loudly when they made strikes at the wrist, torso, and head.  He knew nothing about the sport but it was pretty obvious that Cas was winning hands down.

After the demonstration, the people around the stage clapped and many walked over to talk to the club members.  Dean hung back, watching someone help Cas out of the armor.  His hair was damp and sticking up in wild angles.  He looked adorable—not like he had just beat the crap out of someone on stage with a bamboo sword.

Cas spotted him and walked over with a smile.  Dean’s nerves got worse and he fell back on his old standby of manly posturing to hide his insecurity.

“Nice skirt, man.”

Cas glanced down at the navy blue garment that hung down with pleats to his ankles.  He lifted a leg, showing that they were in fact pants.

“It’s a hakama, actually.  And the top is called a gi.”

“Ah…”

“So, do you think you’d be interested in Kendo?”

Dean stalled.  He wanted to say yes so he could spend time with the super hot cute guy who was nice even to awkward freshman, but sword whacking was not his thing.  Especially if he had to wear a skirt.  Or whatever that thing was.

“We meet on Tuesdays,” Cas said, his eyes had that spark of mischief again.

Dean made a show of being disappointed.  “Oh, the Campus Feminists meet on Tuesday.”

“Oh, right,” Cas said like he was just remembering that fact though he clearly already knew it.  “And since feminism is such a huge part of your life…” he trailed off teasingly.

“Clearly I’m already booked.”

Cas let out a small laugh.  “Yeah, too bad our clubs conflict.”

“Yeah, that is too bad,” Dean said, and meant it.  “But, I think feminism wins out over kendo for me.  It probably wins out over everything.  Unless it conflicts with the Sci-Fi Club, then I might have to bail on both.”

He started to laugh and then cut off abruptly.  Crap.  He hadn’t meant to admit to that.  But if anything, Cas’ smile grew wider.

“It doesn’t.  Sci-Fi Club meets on Friday nights.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep.  I’m a member of that too.”

Dean tilted his head slightly.  “Are you?  Odd you didn’t mention it before.”

A definite blush formed on Cas’ cheeks and he rubbed the back of his neck in an endearing manner.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to scare off the hottest guy I’ve ever seen by telling him I’m a giant nerd with an Uhura costume hanging in my closet.”

Dean’s brain practically exploded on the “hottest guy” part, so he almost missed it, but then it clicked in his head.  He laughed and put a hand out to grab Cas’ arm in case he tried to run away.

“ _Uhura_ costume?”

“Spock,” Cas said suddenly, going stiff.  “I meant Spock.”

“But you said Uhura.”

“Yeah, but, I _meant_ Spock.”

Dean nodded and dropped his hand.  “Sure, sure.”

“It was for a cosplay competition!” Cas said hurriedly.  “We didn’t have enough people to finish the skit because one of the girls backed out at the last minute and I was the only one who could fit in the costume!”

Dean put his hands up.  “Judgment free zone over here.  I’m a feminist, remember?  If girls can wear pants, boy can wear dresses.”

Cas groaned softly and looked like he was looking for a hole in the ground that could swallow him whole.  Dean took pity on him and reached out again to brush his arm.

“Hey.  Can you show me to the Sci-Fi Club booth?  I’d like to sign up.”

“Uh, sure,” Cas said, smiling a little more confidently.  “Just let me change really quick.”

Cas disappeared amongst the kendo club members and Dean pretended like he wasn’t trying to peek through them and watch the guy change.  He emerged a couple minutes later in the jeans and T-shirt he’d been wearing before.  Cas smiled and stuck his hands in his pockets nervously.

“Shall we?” he asked.

Dean nodded and they began to make their way through the crowd of students, pressed up against each other as they tried to make their way through the crowd.  Because it was crowded.  No other reason.

“Hey, Cas!” someone yelled after them.  “It’s your turn at the booth, man!”

“Dude, shut up!  You’re spoiling his game!” someone else hiss-whispered—very loudly.

Cas put a hand over his face.  “Oh, my God.”

Dean chuckled and nudged him lightly.  “Don’t worry.  Your ‘game’ is still very much unspoiled.”

Cas laughed.  “Thanks.  So, uh, what’s your favorite series of _Star Trek_?”

Dean eagerly picked up that thread of conversation as they wound their way through the activities fair.  They actually passed right by the Sci-Fi Club booth, and didn’t realize that they had until they were sitting side by side on the grass near the lake behind the art building, watching the moon rise behind the pines.


End file.
